Tag Archives: olympics

London tries to terrify the world with Olympic mascot

by Robin Parrish
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London tries to terrify the world with Olympic mascot

Why does London want to give the world night terrors? What did we ever do to Great Britain? The official mascot of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, Wenlock, is one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen. I think they tried to appeal to us geeks by tech-ing it up, but it just looks like the angry love child of Leela from Futurama and the liquid metal Terminator. I think he’s about to shoot a beam of energy out of that great big evil eye and make me melt like that Nazi guy in Raiders. I keep hoping it will point that eye someplace else, but it follows me Read more »

Digital cloud tower to hover over 2012 Olympics

by Robin Parrish
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Digital cloud tower to hover over 2012 Olympics

Olympic games always inspire architectural feats that capture the imagination, but the 2012 London Olympics are getting a monument like nothing the world has ever seen. It’s called the Cloud, and it’s envisioned as a symbol of the digital age. The Cloud tower is made up of inflatable, light-emitting spheres floating above lightweight, slender columns, which together create a three-dimensional display you can go inside, that feeds real-time information to London’s skies. Citizens and visitors all over London will be able to see the information displayed by LEDs embedded into the spheres that make up the top of the structure. Though it’s only one of several proposed monuments that may Read more »

Tech helps to save energy at the Winter Olympics

by andy
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Tech helps to save energy at the Winter Olympics

With all the excitement of the opening ceremony and on-piste sporting action, it’s easy to forget that the Vancouver Olympics was also touted as being one of the greenest on record. To help with that, a system called the Venue Energy Tracker has been devised to monitor how much electricity is being used to provide heat, light and power to the Olympic Village and main venues. The results are pretty impressive, too. In the first three days of the Games, a 20 per cent reduction in energy consumption has been marked thanks to sustainable practices. In total that’s around 66,000 kw/h saved so far, with a target of 18 gigawatt Read more »